Buck69 releases new blues CD

Toledo-based blues-rock band Buck69 recently released an album offering 16 tracks of original material.

Buck69 Illustration courtesy Tom Clawson

“No Medicine Like the Blues” is the second album from the seven-piece contemporary blues-rock outfit that formed in 2004. Lead vocalist, and songwriter/guitarist Tom Clawson said taking the time to write quality songs was key for the second offering.

“I started writing new material even before we finished the first CD, so you could say this one took about six years,” Clawson said. “We really took our time with this, compared to the first one. We wanted the first CD to be good, but we rushed it a little due to the excitement. I’m really pleased with the outcome. I feel it’s the best songwriting I’ve done, and the band did a great job of putting down the music.”

Buck69’s previous release, “When She Whispers Your Name,” was a 2008 Grammy Award finalist for contemporary blues. The group also contributed a song, “Have a Mighty Fine Christmas,” to the recent Make-A-Wish Foundation benefit CD “Holiday Wishes 3: If You Believe.”

Clawson, a longtime musician, was on an extended break from the business when his son, Alex, suggested that they play together in 2002.

“The two of us [played] around Toledo doing some acoustic stuff,” Clawson said. “I was only too happy to try it out, if not mainly just to spend time with my son. After a couple years he says, ‘Dad, let’s start a band.’ I was a little hesitant, knowing the baggage that comes with forming and maintaining a band.”

But the elder Clawson agreed, and the two set out to handpick Buck69’s lineup. Clawson said it was critical to form a true team of professional musicians and singer/songwriters.

The band is a well-rounded lineup of some of Toledo’s most recognizable names in music. Alex plays rhythm and lead guitar, and John Sevilla plays lead and bass guitar. Candice Coleman, a former “American Idol” contestant, sings lead and backup vocals. David Alan plays drums and provides backup vocals, B.J. Love plays keyboards and Randy Paredes plays lead, rhythm and slide guitar.

“Each of us [brings] a diverse mixed bag of talent to the band. That’s why you’ll never see us listed as ‘Tom and Buck69,’ or ‘Candice and Buck69,’ or any of the other guys’ names. When you come to see us play or listen to our CDs, you’re not getting one person with some musicians backing him up, you’re getting seven multitalented people coming together as a team who all could be the frontman/woman of their own band.”

Clawson said that, due to the size of the band, it is difficult to play weekly gigs at local bars, so they try to stick to fairs, festivals and fundraisers. Buck69 has played at the Ohio State Fair, the Toledo Speedway Jam, the MS Jam, the Fort Wayne Jazz and Blues Festival and several other festivals.

“I’ve found that doing the ‘every week bar thing’ burns out the fans and the musicians,” Clawson said. “Besides, I like the energy that the band brings to a show, and I know some of that would be lost playing cover songs over and over again at the bars. It’s just not what the band is about.”

Clawson admitted that “No Medicine Like the Blues,” which was recorded and produced by Sevilla’s New Realm Recording, provided some challenges in trying to organize and arrange music for a large group of songwriters.

“Of course, raising the money is always the hardest part, [but] the next hardest thing was writing some of the songs. I wanted to have Candice be lead singer on a couple of the songs, so I had to write accordingly, and she does a great job on ‘Without My Baby,’ which I knew she would. And John Sevilla wrote the music for four songs, and said, ‘Here, write some lyrics.’ That was a totally new experience.”

Clawson said that if he had to choose a favorite song from the album, it would likely be the title track, a progressive rock-influenced blues jam featuring a lead guitar part reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, with a bluesy edge.

“It’s not the best radio-friendly song on the CD because it’s eight minutes long, but it really shows the professionalism of the guys in the band,” he said.

“[Also], Candice took ‘Without My Baby’ and made it her own, and it was a real treat to have Johnny Neel from the Allman Brothers Band play keyboards on ‘Dead End Road.’”

Clawson said keeping things fresh and unique is what helps set Buck69 apart.

“At my age now, I’ve listened to a lot of music and my biggest gripe has always been that you put a CD in while cruising down the road, and it really sucks when all the songs start sounding alike. That’s why people listen to the radio and why mixed CDs are so popular — the diversity.

“Our No. 1 rule of thumb is to be eclectic and diverse. I want you to be able to put our CD in your car stereo and just cruise, with nothing sounding the same, so you don’t get bored.”

“No Medicine Like the Blues” is available at Amazon.com, CD Baby., iTunes, Culture Clash Records and directly from the band.

35 at 52: Mark Mikel to play 35th anniversary show Nov. 23

When Toledo musician Mark Mikel’s parents gave him a four-track reel-to-reel machine for his 17th birthday, it was the beginning of a lifelong passion for recording.

“I would write songs and want to hear how it would sound with a band playing it so I’d do the whole thing — guitar, drums, bass, piano, vocals,” Mikel, 52, said. “A lot of it was finished so I could get [my bandmates] to like the song so they would want to learn it and perform it.”

Mark Mikel will play a 35th anniversary show Nov. 23 at Maumee Indoor Theatre.

Toledo Free Press Star Photo and Cover photo by Christie Materni

Thirty-five years later, Mikel is marking the anniversary of that pivotal event by playing his first Toledo-area concert in almost a year. The show is set for 8 p.m. Nov. 23 at the Maumee Indoor Theatre, 601 Conant St.

The show will feature music from Mikel’s former bands Marikesh, The Mark Mikel Hallucination and The Pillbugs as well as tunes from his solo projects and current project Dark Ocean Colors.

General admission tickets are $25 and available at www.popcycleisland.com, the Maumee Indoor Theatre box office, RamaLama Records, Culture Clash Records and Heights Guitars.

Mikel said he assembled a group of some of the best musicians he knows to play with him, including guitarist Jeff Kollman, bassist and former bandmate Ian McCormack, keyboardist Bill Hubauer, drummer Brad Babcock, keyboardist/guitarist Zak Freed and the Monclovian 1st Irrational String Quartet. Several other artists will step in for certain songs, Mikel said.

“I’m excited to be playing with the quality of musicians I’ll be playing with that night,” he said. “These are top-notch guys and I got to hand pick the band.”

A self-described “studio hermit,” Mikel rarely performs live in Toledo anymore. The Maumee show will be his first and last local show this year. He said he stopped after growing frustrated with the bar scene.

“You want to play for an audience, but they’ve got televisions on and they are serving dinner, so it’s a whole different dynamic,” Mikel said. “I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. I didn’t like the role I was playing and it was keeping me from doing what I really wanted to do with music. I wanted to do my own music and I wanted to make and sell records. I want to play places where people really love music.”

Earlier this year, he completed a small solo acoustic tour of the United Kingdom, including a few performances at The Cavern Club in Liverpool.

“The Beatles made that famous,” Mikel said. “What cooler place to play could there be? I’m such a Beatles freak, so to go to the town where The Beatles grew up was so cool.”

‘Yesterday’s Window’

Mikel recently released a four-disc digital set of early recordings. The set, called “Yesterday’s Window,” features songs written from September 1978 to July 1979 and is the first of several planned box sets.

“I have mass amounts of music from over the years that really hasn’t seen the light of day,” Mikel said. “My first album came out in 1985, so I’m going to keep doing boxes until I reach that point.”

Mikel went through all his old reels, transferred them to his computer, cleaned up the tracks and assembled definitive versions from several variations of the same songs.

“You think, 17, it’s going to be a bunch of little kid crap on there, but no, it’s good stuff,” Mikel said. “If it wasn’t any good I’d leave it alone, but it’s good. They really stand up. Some people might like it better than the stuff I do now because who knows? It’s just fun.”

Mikel was born and raised in Toledo, graduating from Bowsher High School. As a kid, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be a musician or a cartoonist.

“Then probably around the age of 11, with the purchase of a drum set, that was it,” Mikel said. “I was a little more into making music than my friends. They were excited about it and having fun, but I was obsessed with it. I’d want to stay home and stay in my basement and write and record. That was all I wanted to do. I was like a mole person.”

Mikel spends nearly every free minute in his studio in Arrowhead Park in Maumee, which is crammed full of instruments and recording equipment, including some of the same equipment he used as a teen.

“I’m very into analog and I try to stay as analog as possible and use vintage equipment,” Mikel said.

He is obsessed with the music of the mid-60s to mid-70s, which he calls “the golden period.”

“Music was able to live and grow as an art before computers took over,” Mikel said. “Today all music sounds the same, but back then music could change sometimes within the same year. You could differentiate between early 1966 and late 1966. I can’t tell the difference between 2003 and 2013.”

Mikel describes himself as “a perfectionist who hates perfection.” One of his earliest inspirations was drummer Micky Dolenz of The Monkees. He also loves The Beatles, The Kinks and The Who.

Mark Mikel has released ‘Yesterday’s Window,’ a four-CD collection of early music.

Photo by Christie Materni

“Perfect music bores the hell out of me,” Mikel said. “It’s knowing when to leave the mistakes, knowing when to not fix your off-key notes, knowing when maybe it’s not the best executed part, but something feels fun about it. The best rock music — The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, Hendrix — they all have rough edges. That’s essential for any kind of art.”

In May, Mikel and Dark Ocean Colors recording partner Scott Hunt released a new album, “Close Enough to See.”

“The biggest thing Mark taught me would be how to finish tunes, how to make it as good as you hoped it would be,” Hunt said. “It’s the art of listening to the big picture. If you were to strip it apart and only listen to one thing at a time, it might sound shitty, but when you put it all together it sounds great.”

Bowersox debut to sell 50,000 copies in first week

Billboard Magazine is reporting that Elliston native Crystal Bowersox’s debut CD, “Farmer’s Daughter,” could sell up to 50,000 copies in its first week of release. The magazine describes the debut as “significant,” coming in below new CDs by Michael Jackson and Diddy but better than new CDs by Tank and Ciara.

Crystal Bowersox (photo by Harper Smith)

The debut should best the recent CD by Lee DeWyze, who bested Bowersox on this year’s season of “American Idol.”

“For you ‘Idol’-watchers, Bowersox’s first-week will likely exceed that of the fellow she lost to: Lee DeWyze. His ‘Live It Up’ debut started with 39,000 at No. 19 a few weeks ago. (DeWyze’s set earned the smallest start for an “Idol” champ’s first post-show album.),” the magazine reported.

Locally the singer’s sales have been going well with “Farmer’s Daughter” selling out at locations around town.

“This is Culture Clash’s biggest album we’ve ever had,” said Pat O’Connor, owner of Culture Clash Records. “This is this album’s sales are the biggest I’ve seen since ‘Physical Graffiti’ by Led Zeppelin.”

O’Connor said he ordered roughly 300 albums, thinking it would last him through the holidays, but sold out early in the day. The store hopes to have some in stock again by Friday.

RamaLama Records owner Rob Kimple said sales went better than he anticipated, with only one left in the store.

Additionally, Best Buy locations on Monroe Street and in Spring Meadows, both sold out of the CD. Some other area retailer locations like Target and Meijer were also out of the CD last night.